All Topics

Comments primarily debate and explain the fundamental nature, purpose, and mechanics of the stock market, often correcting misconceptions by emphasizing its role in trading based on differing valuations rather than intrinsic value or fairness.

Discussions center on the potential for COVID-19 to mutate into more dangerous variants due to widespread infections, questioning vaccine effectiveness against transmission and the evolutionary pressures driving viral changes.

Users request, discuss, and debate Chromecast compatibility and support in various apps and services, including implementation challenges and alternatives.

Discussions center on challenges with cross-browser compatibility, including developers' workarounds for browser bugs and quirks, debates over responsibility between browser vendors and web developers, and calls for better standards adherence.

Discussions center on pumped hydroelectric storage as the most efficient and scalable grid-scale energy storage method, comparing it favorably to batteries, gravity blocks, and compressed air while noting geographical limitations.

Comments discuss and compare an unusual processor design to historical or specialized alternatives like the Mill CPU, Cell processor, Transputer, TMS34010 bit-addressed processor, and MIPS variants with custom extensions.

This cluster centers on amateur radio (ham radio), with users recommending licenses, sharing personal experiences, equipment like Baofeng radios, and its value for off-grid or emergency communications independent of internet infrastructure.

Users debate whether smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Siri-enabled devices are always listening, continuously recording or transmitting audio data without permission, and the trustworthiness of companies' claims about only activating after wake words.

This cluster discusses the 51% attack vulnerability in Bitcoin, focusing on the feasibility of controlling majority hashing power, economic disincentives for attackers, and potential impacts on network trust and value.

This cluster focuses on discussions about employees voluntarily leaving companies due to poor management, low morale, recent firings, or unfavorable company directions, often exploring implications like brain drain and high performers seeking better opportunities.

Users ask for and recommend online communities, forums, and discussion platforms as alternatives to Reddit, Hacker News, and similar sites, frequently mentioning lobste.rs, tildes.net, and Discourse-based forums.

Users share personal stories of quitting or reducing use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, reporting benefits such as improved mental health, more free time, reduced addiction, and no regrets.

Users discuss preferences, pros, cons, privacy risks, and security concerns of using third-party social logins (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) versus traditional email/password or other authentication methods for websites.

Cluster focuses on debates about Rust's `unsafe` keyword, including its meaning, whether it compromises overall safety, its role in building safe abstractions, and necessity for low-level code.

The cluster debates the precise meaning of 'free market', distinguishing it from unregulated or laissez-faire systems, and discusses its implications for regulation, monopolies, competition, and government intervention.

The cluster focuses on promotions and discussions of AI-powered tools, platforms, and services for startup founders, indie hackers, and SMBs, covering idea validation, growth hacking, user acquisition, monetization strategies, and business advice.

The cluster debates the legal boundaries of online speech, distinguishing protected opinions from illegal incitement to violence, true threats, and hate speech, often contrasting US protections with stricter UK laws.

The cluster debates the moral responsibilities of software engineers and tech employees to refuse or quit jobs at companies engaged in unethical practices like surveillance or human rights violations, weighing personal ethics against practical considerations.

Comments primarily compare a featured message queuing or brokering system to established alternatives like RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ, NATS, Kafka, and others, questioning its unique advantages and differences.

Comments expressing disappointment that posts, articles, or products did not live up to the hype, excitement, or promises suggested by titles, introductions, or prior buzz.

Comments humorously discuss the awkwardness and impracticality of using a specific wearable or immersive gadget on the toilet, particularly the challenges of defecating or taking bathroom breaks while wearing or operating it.

Cluster focuses on Hacker News users experiencing burnout, depression, or stagnation in their tech careers, sharing personal stories and recommending solutions like sabbaticals, therapy, exercise, job changes, and pursuing hobbies.

Comments criticize the high fees and commissions charged by apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub to restaurants, along with hidden costs to customers, poor service from drivers, and exploitative business practices.

Users frequently complain about or request publicly available pricing details on product websites, noting the absence or inadequacy of pricing pages. This cluster highlights frustration with hidden or signup-required pricing as poor UX.

The cluster focuses on discussions about the pros and cons of replaceable versus built-in batteries in devices, recommendations for types like Eneloops, NiMH, and 18650 cells, and concerns over battery quality, longevity, self-discharge, recycling, and environmental impact.

Commenters repeatedly question, criticize, or demand the inclusion of encryption in a product or technology discussed in the thread, highlighting its absence or perceived inadequacy.

Comments criticize Apple for mandating WebKit as the sole browser engine on iOS, which limits support for modern web standards and progressive web apps to prevent competition with native App Store apps and protect revenue. Discussions highlight calls for allowing alternative engines like in the EU DMA to improve web competitiveness.

This cluster consists of comments where users express gratitude, admiration, and thanks for insightful, great, or well-written comments made by other users in Hacker News threads.

The cluster focuses on AI-powered code assistants, IDE extensions like Cursor, Codeium, Copilot, and Wingman, with discussions on their integrations into editors such as VS Code and JetBrains, features like RAG, debugging, and preferences for local or toggleable AI.

This cluster focuses on critiques of the diamond trade, including De Beers' monopoly, artificial scarcity, poor resale value, and heavy marketing for engagement rings, with frequent recommendations for lab-grown or synthetic diamonds as superior alternatives.

The cluster focuses on debates about Android's growing market share dominance versus Apple's superior profitability and premium positioning in the smartphone market, including discussions on Google's ad-driven strategy and predictions for future platform success.

Discussions revolve around the value, difficulty, and quotes from experts like Dijkstra, Hoare, and Joel Spolsky on achieving simplicity over unnecessary complexity in software engineering and programming.

Debate on the merits, challenges, and necessity of Chinese characters (hanzi) versus phonetic alternatives like pinyin, focusing on homophones, dialects, learning difficulties, and cultural persistence.

Commenters strongly advocate for using OAuth (especially OAuth2) as the standard solution for authentication and authorization problems discussed in the article, questioning why alternatives are proposed instead.

The cluster discusses Bill Gates' pledge to donate most of his wealth to the Gates Foundation, including debates on its effectiveness, ideological influences, comparisons to other billionaires like Warren Buffett and Elon Musk, and criticisms versus praises of his charitable impact.

This cluster consists of comments thanking others for sharing interesting, insightful, or novel perspectives and viewpoints in discussions.

Users request Azure support or equivalents for a featured tool/service, share experiences with Azure, and debate its usability and reliability compared to other clouds.

Comments discuss and compare various package managers like Nix, Guix, apt, pacman, and rpm, debating their strengths, weaknesses, and the need for new ones in Linux and open source ecosystems.

Debates on assigning monetary value to human lives and weighing lives saved against economic costs or quality-of-life reductions in public policy, especially pandemic responses like lockdowns.

Comments primarily discuss the availability, quality, completeness, and accessibility of documentation for software projects, often complaining about missing or poor docs while requesting links or improvements.

Comments discuss Google's extensive tracking of user data through search, accounts, browsing, ads, and other services, raising privacy concerns about data collection, ad targeting, and whether features like incognito mode prevent it.

Discussions center on techniques to detect, block, and deter web scrapers and bots, especially aggressive AI crawlers, including rate limiting, Cloudflare protections, behavioral detection, and challenges in implementation.

Commenters debate whether technological innovation can resolve environmental crises like climate change, overconsumption, and resource depletion, or if humanity must reduce population and consumption instead. Optimists cite progress and efficiency gains, while pessimists emphasize finite resources and human nature.

This cluster revolves around comments expressing strong skepticism and doubt that a specific event, scenario, or outcome will occur, with most users betting against it or deeming it highly unlikely.

The cluster focuses on comparisons between at-will employment in the US, allowing firing without cause, and stricter protections in Europe and other countries that require justification, notice periods, or processes for termination.

This cluster centers on discussions of the NoScript browser extension, its use for blocking JavaScript to improve web security and privacy, user experiences, and comparisons to alternatives like uBlock.

Comments repeatedly emphasize innate biological, behavioral, and preferential differences between men and women, often in response to studies or observations showing divergent outcomes by gender.

Comments repeatedly suggesting, joking about, or critiquing the use of neural networks as a catch-all solution to the article's problem, reflecting HN's meme-like obsession with deep learning.

Users repeatedly ask for names of specific countries referenced as examples or in lists, often questioning claims about countries lacking a feature like the metric system (e.g., US, Liberia, Myanmar) or noting omissions like EU nations.

Discussions center on the role, effectiveness, and alternatives to moderation in online communities and forums, including community self-moderation, hired moderators, meta-moderation, and comparisons to sites like Slashdot and Hacker News.

This cluster discusses how social media, fake news, biased headlines, and algorithmic feeds contribute to public misinformation, societal polarization, outrage culture, and declining discourse quality.

The cluster focuses on discussions about Donald Trump's alleged crimes and ongoing legal prosecutions, including comparisons to cases like John Edwards and Michael Cohen, debates over obstruction of justice, campaign finance violations, classified documents, and selective prosecution concerns.

This cluster centers on debates about whether companies and large corporations are inherently amoral entities driven by profit, lacking true morals, or if morality stems from individuals within them.

Cluster centers on debates comparing Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, and other messaging apps, emphasizing security, end-to-end encryption, privacy features like phone number requirements, usability, and user preferences.

Discussions revolve around ambiguous wording, phrasing, and interpretations in statements, leading to confusion and miscommunication in various contexts like conversations, emails, legal texts, and instructions.

Users share personal anecdotes about using MacBooks and other Apple computers for 5-10+ years with minimal issues, emphasizing their durability and long lifespan compared to frequent upgrade cycles.

Discussions revolve around Apple's Vision Pro headset, debating its potential as a revolutionary 'iPhone moment' in spatial computing versus criticisms of it being overpriced, half-baked, or inferior to competitors like Meta Quest.

Comments revolve around whether discussions, plans, or predictions properly account for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, often challenging assumptions that ignore it.

The cluster discusses whether journalists can or should be criminally prosecuted for publishing sensitive or illegally obtained information, emphasizing tensions between freedom of the press, source protection, and government or business secrecy.

Users recommend and discuss IP cameras, software like Blue Iris and ZoneMinder, and setups like UniFi or Reolink that enable local-only video storage and access without cloud upload or internet connectivity, prioritizing privacy.

The cluster focuses on the exorbitant billing practices of US hospitals, including inflated charges, insurance negotiations that result in much lower payments, and the financial ruin faced by uninsured patients who receive massive bills.

This cluster consists of comments primarily using 'lol', 'LOL', or similar laughter expressions to convey amusement, sarcasm, disbelief, or humor in response to various topics.

Comments analyze Microsoft's failed attempts with Windows Phone and Windows Mobile, debating reasons like poor timing, weak app ecosystems, UI mismatches, developer support issues, and strategic missteps against iOS and Android dominance.

The cluster centers on debates about enforcing traffic laws on self-driving cars for minor violations like speeding or improper stops, comparing it to human drivers who routinely break rules without consequences, and discussing ticketing, liability, and criminality.

Users repeatedly question the existence, independence, quality, and public availability of third-party audits for a specific software, system, or company, expressing skepticism about attestations and calling for verifiable audit reports.

The cluster focuses on the lifecycle and quality degradation of online communities like HN, Reddit, and Slashdot as they grow, with early adopters leaving due to influx of less dedicated users and dilution of content. Discussions propose solutions such as barriers to entry, heavy moderation, small size limits, and subcommunity features to sustain quality.

Comments primarily use sarcasm and irony to invoke the 'free market' in response to undesirable outcomes like monopolies or failures, questioning its effectiveness or existence.

Commenters debate assigning responsibility for major software incidents and outages, arguing against scapegoating individual engineers and instead emphasizing systemic issues, management failures, and flawed processes.

The cluster focuses on discussions about potential vulnerabilities in Bitcoin's proof-of-work mining, including miner censorship of transactions, blockchain rollbacks, difficulty adjustments, and attacks like withholding blocks or 51% attacks.

Comments discuss inaccuracies, misconceptions, and corrections in various news articles, often criticizing journalism failures and highlighting updates or retractions by outlets like NYT and The Atlantic.

Commenters debate the influence of culture on societal trends like population dynamics, its potential degradation or evolution, and its importance relative to biology, economics, or evolution.

Discussions center on Soylent as a meal replacement product, debating its nutritional adequacy, comparisons to alternatives like Ensure and Huel, potential health impacts, and viability as a full food substitute.

Discussions revolve around speculation, skepticism, and debates over whether specific individuals like Craig Wright or Dorian Nakamoto are the real creator of Bitcoin, including analysis of claims, proofs, and hoaxes.

Discussions center on controversies where individuals publicly criticize companies or people for offensive jokes or unprofessional behavior, such as git pull jokes at PyCon or Replit incidents, debating public shaming versus private resolution and resulting firings or bans.

Discussions center on Sony PlayStation's backwards compatibility issues across generations like PS2, PS3, PS4, and PS5, including criticisms of dropped features, emulation, and comparisons to the parent topic.

The cluster centers on debates about whether coworkers can or should be friends, the value of social interactions at work versus maintaining professional boundaries, and balancing work relationships with personal life outside the office.

Comments repeatedly clarify that Android does not use the standard JVM or full Java, but instead runs on Dalvik/ART with a custom Java implementation, while critiquing its limitations and suggesting alternatives like Kotlin or Go.

Users share strategies for consuming Hacker News content, such as skimming titles, prioritizing comments over articles, using RSS feeds and aggregators to filter high volume, and managing information overload.

Commenters debate why employers easily fill low-paying jobs despite high turnover, citing abundant desperate workers, limited alternatives, and market dynamics that keep wages low.

Cluster focuses on variations in human color perception, including debates on whether people see the same colors, color blindness, tetrachromacy, and illusions like the blue/black vs. white/gold dress.

Commenters share personal anecdotes about quitting or reducing coffee and caffeine intake, including withdrawal symptoms like headaches, fatigue, and anxiety, as well as benefits such as better sleep, stable energy, and heightened awareness of its effects.

The cluster focuses on debates about the Hong Kong protests against the extradition bill to China, concerns over loss of autonomy, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, and tensions between Hong Kong's semi-autonomous status and mainland control.

The cluster centers on debates about linking employee pay to productivity, arguing that without financial rewards for extra effort, workers lack motivation to exceed minimum requirements, contrasting with intrinsic or other incentives.

The cluster discusses how cars, motorcycles, and modified vehicles are the main sources of noise pollution in cities, debating engine noise versus tire noise, the quietness of electric vehicles, safety concerns, and calls for stricter regulations on loud exhausts.

This cluster revolves around comments criticizing typos and spelling mistakes in Hacker News articles or posts, with authors often apologizing, acknowledging the errors, or promising fixes.

Discussions center on user frustrations with content spread across multiple streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Prime, requiring numerous subscriptions and often leading to piracy or physical media alternatives. Commenters miss unified libraries and lament poor discoverability and availability.

Users discuss running OpenBSD on various hardware like laptops and new devices, inquiring about compatibility, ports, and comparisons to NetBSD and FreeBSD.

The cluster debates the replaceability of smartphone batteries, especially iPhones, contrasting user-replaceable designs from older phones with modern glued-in batteries, replacement costs via Apple or third parties, and calls for easier access to extend device lifespan and reduce waste.

Comments primarily recommend or discuss using the Tor Browser to address privacy, tracking, blocking, or access issues, often comparing it to other solutions or questioning its effectiveness.

Humorous discussions and complaints about finger-related challenges with fingerprint authentication, such as registering multiple fingers, preferring thumbs over other fingers, and physical limitations like not having enough fingers or accuracy problems.

Users recommend ditching the official Facebook mobile app in favor of the mobile browser version to avoid issues like tracking, battery drain, and privacy concerns, while comparing features between the two.

Discussions center on the use of #!/bin/bash versus #!/bin/sh in shell script shebangs, debating portability, POSIX compliance, bashisms, and system differences like dash or env usage.

Comments focus on the operating system support of the discussed software or tool, with users questioning or complaining about compatibility with Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Discussions focus on bridge collapses, poor maintenance, historical failures like Genoa and China, and the need for upkeep, often as analogies for reliability concerns.

Commenters debate the prescription status of various medications, share experiences with drugs like pseudoephedrine and Adderall, question self-medication risks, and discuss alternatives such as pills versus liquids or AI advice tools.

Commenters debate or qualify various statements about living conditions, problems, or experiences by specifically referencing the San Francisco Bay Area, often contrasting it with other locations.

The cluster discusses how compilers optimize code assuming no undefined behavior (UB), resulting in surprising or broken outputs when UB occurs, with debates on whether this is the programmer's fault, beneficial for performance, or if compilers should instead error on detected UB.

This cluster features enthusiastic endorsements and positive user experiences with a service, emphasizing its quality, responsive support, ease of use, and value compared to alternatives.

Comments recommend and compare platforms like Liberapay, Gratipay (formerly Gittip), Patreon, and GitHub Sponsors for donating to and funding open-source projects.

The cluster discusses Bluesky's features like non-intrusive feeds, federation versus decentralization, comparisons to Twitter, user growth, moderation, and political user base leanings.